bush hall

December 21, 2006

David Ford gig at Bush Hall

One of the guests at Duke Special’s gig last week was David Ford – fantastic singer/songwriter, and from the two minutes I spent talking to him, a seemingly v. nice bloke. He mentioned at that gig that he had a show coming up at Bush Hall, but it was sold out, and apologised for not being able to invite me to even buy a ticket and go… Fear not, for where bands can’t get tickets for their own shows, the mighty Catster can employ the dark forces of the evil empire to procure tickets to just about anything (if I was planning on having Christmas dinner at Bono’s house with his family, and I’m sure Catster could sort out a guestlist place… :o)

So, Catster, The Cheat and I all went to the gig, after a lovely curry at the Ajanta (scene of many many a curry with Jez when he was living in Shepherd’s Bush – come home, you fool – Canada is clearly not the place for you, I haven’t done a wedding gig since you left!)

The gig was an annual charity show that David does, with special guests, to raise money for different projects – this year’s was a YMCA project that took kids from problem situations and put them on a scheme for a few months that apparently helps them look at self-esteem and lifestyle issues before sending them off to Durban in South Africa to work on an HIB/AIDS project out there. Amazing stuff, gotta love the YMCA.

And the gig was amazing. David’s own songs are big emotional singer/songwriter affairs, like a more angry Damian Rice, and the choice of crazy covers for the night was briliant. Fran Healy from Travis did a fab version of Dancing Queen, then a completely acoustic version of Driftwood, stood on top of a grand piano played by David – that’s almost certainly on YouTube by now; if not I’ll upload my video of it, cos it was great.

David then picked songs at random out of a ‘number one hits of the last 30 years’ book, and played a blinding version of ‘My Heart Will Go On’ – how clever is Celine that she managed to make me hate what is now clearly a very very beautiful song? That takes quite a skill, a sort of reverse alchemy… Anyway, David played it fairly straight to start with, then went all uptempo and spoilt it, but still, it proved that with just a guitar and a voice, it’s an incredible song. He also did Like A Prayer with big audience sing-along, which worked brilliantly too, and Ashes to Ashes, but couldn’t remember the melody on the middle. Same for ‘If You’re Not The One’ by Daniel Beddingfield, another song I’ve loved since I first heard it (see Catster, I’m not ashamed to admit it!), which David again hinted at doing a beautiful version of before giving up… He could SO do an incredible covers album of tunes like that. maybe he will one day.

Anyway, all in a great night – extra kudos to his drummer, who was tops. The rest of the band were fun but a bit shambolic – great for a night like this, but not what you’d want on a proper gig. The drummer though was v. funky. Great player.

So now I need to catch a normal David Ford gig some time, to see what he does then. I’ll be the one down the front asking for ‘My Heart Will Go On’.

March 9, 2006

3 gig reviews (not mine!)

That’s not my gigs, not not my reviews. Of course these are my reviews.

For some reason I completely forgot to blog about the two gigs I went to last thursday – Buddy Miller at Bush Hall followed by Ursula Rucker at The Jazz Cafe.

Buddy’s gig was put on by the lovely people at Greenbelt, so they were hosting a bit of a reception upstairs (if you ever want to do a gig with VIP stuff going on, Bush Hall is ideal – really nice little bar upstairs…) – so that was nice, to catch up with lots of GB-related friends, and Hoda from Fender who I’d not really had the chance to chat to for a long time. All good.

Opening the show was the marvellous Brian Houston – who just gets better every time I see him play. Don’t miss him if he plays near you.

After that was some other bloke who didn’t really do it for me, then Buddy. Part of the interest in the gig for me was that the rhythm section for the gig were Paul and Phil Wilkinson from The Amazing Pilots (I say ‘from’… they ARE the amazing pilots…) who are without doubt one of the finest roots rock rhythm sections in the UK. I’ve seen them before playing both as their own gig (where Paul plays guitar not bass) and backing up Iain Archer, and they are just fantastic. As a trio with Buddy, they were amazing (though there was no evidence of them being actual pilots). Alternately rocking out and acoustic balladeering, the evening was just magic.

Sadly I had to bail out about four tracks from the end of their set to get over to see Ursula Rucker. A gig that I really didn’t know much about other than a) Andy Hamill was on bass and had put me on the guest list and b) it involved, in some way, looping and poetry. Sounded promising. Lived up to the promise – Ursula is kind of a female Michael Franti – political poet, to eloquent and erudite to just be simply a ‘rapper’, she’s a soul singer/poet/thinker/activist, and puts on a slamming show. Her core band was Tim Motzer, looping and processing an acoustic guitar, and a drummer (whose name I can’t find just now), and they were augmented for a couple of tunes by Andy on bass and Julian on violin. All in all, a crackin’ gig.

And then, leaping forward to last night, Gary Husband was playing at St Cyprians. Well, was meant to be playing at St Cyprians, but there’s no heating in there, and the piano wasn’t tuned, so it was moved over the road to a school, a Yamaha C3 was hired in, and all was well.

Gary, for those who don’t know about such jazz-related things, is in the rather unique position of being pretty much at the top of his game worldwide as both a drummer AND a piano player. Last night was a solo piano gig (augmented at times by some extra layers of piano and percussion on multitrack), and was mind-blowing. It’s SO rare to hear that level of instrumental virtuosity without it either being smug, sterile or both. This was neither. Which was all the more remarkable given that the two sets were inspired by, and consisted of pieces written by or based on – Alan Holdsworth and John McLaughlin, both of whom are often seen as being monster technicians over and above their contribution to the world of jazz composition.

The playing, the arrangements, the performance and the banter were all top class, leaving no-one there in any doubt at all as to Gary’s standing in the world of piano players. I can’t think of many players who could have done anything even close to what he achieved. A hugely inspiring gig.

February 18, 2006

Juliet Turner and Pierce Pettis, Bush Hall, 17/2/06

As y’all know, I do make a habit of going to gigs by people I know. Well, I know lots of lovely talented marvellous people, and I like to support live music as much as I can anyway, so being able to combine supporting live music, and seeing lovely friends makes for a doubly marvellous night out.

Thus it was last night. ‘Twas also rather nice to do something special with the lovely Gareth and Jane, and we all toddled off to Bush Hall in Shepherd’s Bush, a rather lovely venue that was clearly at one point a ball-room, and and is now a rather lovely gig venue for about a 2-300 peoples.

Pierce Pettis was already on when we got there, and sounding marvellous. I hadn’t seen Pierce since the Cheat and I went to stay with him in Alabama, Oct 2004, so it was lovely to see him again, and hear him. The couple of new songs he played were gorgeous – a Narnia one and one where he was joined by Juliet and Brian on BVs called ‘Vera Cruz’ – gorgeous stuff. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a bad song by Pierce, even on the three CDRs of unreleased stuff that he gave the Cheat and I when we visited (BTW, I think it’s my turn with the CDs, The Cheat!)

The half time break was almost as much fun as the gig – catching up with many friends that I hadn’t seen for ages. It’s nice with gigs like this, that I can pretty much guarantee that I’m going to know about 20% of the audience.

Then Juliet Turner – most years, I see Juliet play more than just about any other artist that I’m not actually touring with. 4 or 5 times, I guess. And never ever get bored of her songs. She’s a fantastic songwriter, with a unique turn of phrase and way with rhythm. In Ireland she’s a big star, having gone platinum and won reader’s polls in Hot Press (the Irish answer to Q, NME and Mojo all rolled into one) – and she’ll get there over here too, for sure. Cos she’s fab. Apparently she’s got all self-concious about the amount she talks on stage, which is a shame, because her between-song banter was pretty stripped back tonight, and she’s a great story teller. As is Pierce, who was equally subdued. It might just have been one of those venues. I’ve played in those before now, they just don’t lend themselves to getting the kind of feedback from the audience that you need to sustain rambling stories.

Anyway, both Juliet and Pierce, and Juliet’s guitarist Brian Grace, were on top form, a fab night was had by all, and I’m already looking forward to seeing them all again!

As a side note, we got into a discussion last night about the lack of availability of Pierce’s early albums – the ‘big hair’ years. When Pierce was on Windham Hill, he had a hair cut that I also flirted with in the late 80s, the ‘mushroom cloud’, where all your photos look like holiday snaps taken on Bikini Atoll during the h-bomb tests. here’s the best one I could find of Pierce online –

anyone got any others? :o)

June 21, 2004

Like a Rolling Stone… With a Rolling Stone

So I’m sat listening through the lastest set of tiny tweaks on the new album, and the phone rings. It’s Harry Cellist offering me a ticket to see Bob Dylan at the Fleadh in Finsbury Park in 25 minutes! Quick chat to the small person to postpone prearranged domestic chores to a later hour, and I’m on the tube on my way to Finsbury Park to see his Bobness.

Bob has been on my list of ‘artists I really need to see before the drop dead’ for a long time, so I’ve very glad I saw him. There’s something very bizarre about Dylan – no-one else on earth would get away with singing simple blues tunes in the style of a punch drunk tramp impersonating Marge Simpson, and yet there’s something utterly compelling about his performance. Add to that the presence of the mighty Ron Wood on Stage (you can say what you want about jumped up rock stars, Ron Wood is one hell of a guitarist…) and it made for a pretty fine gig.

However, it was a gig in front of about 30,000 people, in a damp field in North London with the sound changing whenever the wind changed direction, not being able to see much and being bumped into by drunk people every couple of minutes.

Contrast that with Friday night’s entertainment, sat in a beautiful old church building in Reading listening to Brian Houston and Sarah Masen sing and play. Both exquisite singer-songwriters, Brian sounding not unlike Bob Dylan in his younger days at times, but with a Van Morrison accent. There were probably 35-40 people there, it was warm, dry, no drunks that I spotted, the sound was close to perfect, the drinks were cheap and the music of an arguably higher quality than most of what goes on on big stages round the country at all the festivals over the summer.

And you missed it.

The good news is that Brian and Sarah are playing in London tomorrow night at Bush Hall in Shepherd’s Bush, along with two other fantastic singer/songwriters, Cathy Burton and Duke Special. Shit, that’s four really really really great acts on one bill. In a lovely venue. In-doors. for about